This year promises to be the most dramatic in Scottish politics since Holyrood was created in 1999 - with the opinion polls suggesting we will have a brand new First Minister after May 5. Today, the Record's political editor MAGNUS GARDHAM looks ahead to a stormy 2011.

SCOTLAND GOES TO THE POLLS

Scots go to the polls on May 5 - but we already have a good idea how the campaign will unfold because the parties have been road-testing and refining their key messages since the party conference season last autumn.

So if you plan to follow nothing but the Royal wedding (Wills and Kate will tie the knot on April 29, six days before the election) here's what you'll be missing on the campaign trail ...

The SNP will focus on three things.

1. Alex Salmond, the Nats will tell us until our ears bleed, will make a better First Minister than Iain Gray. And they will claim their "experienced" top team of Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Kenny MacAskill are a cut above their Labour opposite numbers.

2. As April's council tax bills drop through letterboxes, they will remind voters how they have frozen the charges for a fourth year running.

They are likely to ditch their hare-brained and unpopular plan to replace council tax with a local income tax - and that will put Labour under more pressure to come up with a plan of their own to reform council funding that doesn't look like a tax rise.

3. They will argue Scotland needs independence to defend itself from Tory spending cuts. The message will appeal to diehard Nationalists. But Labour will remind everyone how countries like Iceland and Ireland - which Salmond wanted Scotland to emulate - were brought to the brink of ruin by the global financial crisis.

Labour will make three key election pledges.

1. They will vow to create 10,000 jobs or training places for unemployed young Scots with their s40million Scottish Future Jobs. The scheme replaces Labour's flagship job creation programme axed by the Tories, so as well as preventing a "lost generation" of jobless kids, it is designed to show Iain Gray's party are able to defend Scotland against the Con-Dems.

2. They will pledge automatic jail terms for blade-wielding thugs. More than 30,000 people have signed a petition demanding tougher penalties for knife crime - but SNP and Lib Dem MSPs blocked a plan for automatic jail when Labour proposed it at Holyrood.

3. They will promise to "ban Buckfast" - or at least set a legal limit on the amount of caffeine in alcoholic drinks. The tonic wine and a handful of other drinks would be banned if they refused to change their recipe. It is another Labour plan that has been blocked by the SNP at Holyrood.

But Labour will also launch a relentless attack on the Nats' embarrassing record of broken promises since Alex Salmond took office in 2007.

And there is no shortage of ammunition. The SNP came to power promising to scrap the council tax, cut class sizes to 18 in the first three years of primary school, write off student debts and give all firsttime buyers a s2000 grant.

Not one of those vote-winning pledges has been honoured.

Labour won't let the SNP, or the voters, forget it.

WHO IS GOING TO WIN?

Labour are confident they'll win the election. So confident, in fact, that some MSPs have even been warned against complacency. But looking at last year's Westminster election and recent opinion polls, it's easy to see why they expect Iain Gray to become the fifth First Minister of Scotland in the days after May 5.

Labour may have lost badly across the UK, but the party did well in Scotland - polling over one million votes, increasing their share of the vote and regaining seats surrendered in by-elections.

The SNP did poorly. Alex Salmond boasted of increasing his tally of MPs from seven to 20 - but the number actually dropped to six.

And the latest Ipsos Mori poll suggests Labour have built on that result, going 10 points ahead of the SNP in the battle for Holyrood seats.

According to one analysis, that would make them comfortably the biggest Holyrood party with 58 seats - 12 more than at present. The SNP would drop from 47 to 43 seats. The Tories and Lib Dems would also lose four seats apiece, giving them 13 and 12 respectively.

But few Holyrood-watchers believe this is going to happen.

Even with new constituency boundaries - which tend to favour Labour - it is hard to see, contest by contest, so many seats changing hands.

A narrow Labour victory looks the most likely outcome. And that could make life very hard for Iain Gray.

He had hoped for an alliance with the Greens.

But that would require a Green revival that is stubbornly refusing to happen.

And Labour will be deeply reluctant to go into coalition with a Lib-Dem party who are propping up a Tory government at Westminster - assuming that Tavish Scott's party are left with enough MSPs to make it possible in the first place.

Meanwhile, the SNP and Tories will be determined to block anything and everything Labour come up with.

The Nats, particularly, feel bitter towards Labour over their refusal to back minimum alcohol pricing and other flagship policies.

So unlike Salmond, who has been helped by an unwritten pact with the Tories, a Labour First Minister in May could find himself completely isolated - and fighting claims of being a lame duck.

WHAT IF THE SNP LOSE?

Alex Salmond has relished every chauffeur-driven moment of being First Minister of Scotland.

But, if he loses the election, he will not enjoy being leader of the opposition. We know this because he has done the job before - up against original First Minister Donald Dewar - and got so fed-up he quit Holyrood to concentrate on his Westminster career.

Few believe Salmond will stay on as party leader if the Nats are well beaten on May 5. The red-hot favourite to succeed him is Nicola Sturgeon, the health secretary and deputy first minister.

When she stood in for Salmond at First Minister's Questions recently, her performance was cheekily described by Iain Gray as a "job application".

Despite that, Sturgeon is widely respected - even on the Labour benches - and proved an effective Holyrood leader for the party after Salmond's previous departure.

Education secretary Mike Russell will be tempted to stand, if only because parties, rightly, dislike coronations. But expect Sturgeon to be unveiled as the new leader of the SNP at the party conference in October.

WHAT NEXT FOR TORIES?

Vote Tory on May 5! Vote Auntie Annabel! Er, not quite.

While the formidable Ms Goldie will lead the Scots Tories into the election in May no-one knows who will be in charge by June.

That uncertainty is the result of a bombshell report on the Tories' dismal recent election performances in Scotland.

Tory peer Lord Sanderson ordered a major shake-up and a leadership contest straight after the Holyrood election in a bid to revive their fortunes.

Goldie insists she will fight to keep her job - despite the Tories winning only one of a dozen target seats under her leadership in last year's general election.

But no one actually believes her.

Instead, deputy leader and health spokesman Murdo Fraser and transport spokesman Jackson Carlaw are expected to battle it out to replace David Cameron's "favourite Scottish auntie".

Peter Duncan, the former shadow Scottish Secretary who is standing for Holyrood, could also mount a challenge.

So make the most of Goldie's carefully choreographed abseiling or motorcycling stunts when the campaign gets under way. They are likely to be her last.

CAN MILIBAND CRACK IT?

This will be a make-or-break year for Ed Miliband.

Critics claim he has got off to a lacklustre start as Labour leader since his dramatic victory over brother David.

They say he is too focused on Labour's failings at the last election and needs to get out and clobber the Con-Dems more.

Ed-sceptics also believe he gave the wrong jobs to the wrong people in his shadow cabinet.

And they fear the lengthy, two-year policy reviews he has ordered simply add to a sense of "drift".

But Labour victories in the Scottish and Welsh elections in May would give him a huge boost.

And, if that happens, Ed can prove he is on a roll with a barnstorming speech to the Labour party conference in September.

WILL COALITION LAST?

Demos over tuition fees are just the start. This year, folk from all walks of life will protest at rising unemployment and hardship. But the Con-Dem coalition will survive. David Cameron knows the marriage is working too well for the Tories to risk wrecking it, and the Lib-Dems are stuck. If they walk away and force an election, they face total wipeout.

Their support has sunk to an all-time low after they backtracked on election pledges to oppose tuition fees down south. And big stars such as Vince Cable have proved gaffe-prone. So Cameron and Clegg will get to their first joint press conference of 2012 - but only after a tricky year in power.

WHAT ABOUT SYSTEM?

Scotland is not only voting in the Holyrood election in May- there is also a UK referendum on the polling system at Westminster.

The choice is between the existing first-past-alternative vote method.

Under first-past-the-post, the candidate with the most votes wins.

Under the AV system, voters rank candidates in order of preference - 1, 2, 3 and so on. The candidate who comes last is knocked out and second choices are taken into account.

Candidates are eliminated until one gets 50 per cent of the total and wins.

Suppoters say the system is fairer because there are fewer "wasted" votes - but the result of the referendum is too close to call.